Robert W. Norris is the author of The Good Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise: Pentimento Memories of Mom and Me. According to Robert Whiting, it is an “emotionally powerful memoir that spans nearly a century and several continents.”

The book is about Norris and his mother Kay, who died in 2021, four days short of her 95th birthday. Norris was a Vietnam War resister, a conscientious objector who refused deployment to Vietnam and spent time in prison. As Norris puts it in a letter, “Greetings from an old Vietnam War conscientious objector and ex-pat who took the 1960s jingoistic catch phrase ‘America, love it or leave it’ seriously and ended up in Japan back in 1983,” where he became a university professor. Norris retained a tight relationship with his mother who supported his military resistance and who visited him in Japan numerous times over the years.

The show’s engineer and associate producer is Tracey Schulz and the staff photographer is Roger Baker; Suzy Shelor is Rag Radio associate; Alice Embree is a frequent guest host; and Glenn Smith and Roy Casagranda are our political analysts.

This show was broadcast (and streamed) live Friday, 2-3 p.m. CDT on KOOP, and was later rebroadcast and streamed on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., on Houston Pacifica's KPFT HD-3 90.1, by KKRN, 88.5-FM in Round Mountain, CA, and at WALHRadio.com in Wilmington, OH. Learn more about Rag Radio here.

Contact: ragradio@koop.org.